Dua Lipa Dazzles L.A. for ‘Radical Optimism’ Tour: Concert Review
It’s been about a year and a half since Dua Lipa released her third album, “Radical Optimism,” a project perfectly suited to soundtrack a pleasant day at the beach. She recorded it during scraps of time on her 2022 tour for “Future Nostalgia,” a record that exhumed the tropes of disco past and mapped them to a contemporary pop sound. “Optimism” wasn’t met with the same enthusiasm as her previous record — perhaps because “Nostalgia,” released at the onset of the pandemic, offered the fantasy of escape at a time when it was needed most — yet it still succeeded in broadening the scope of her pop powers, folding in new influences while refining the bombast of its predecessor.
Lipa brought that album to life for the first of four sold-out performances on her “Radical Optimism” tour last night at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum, making for a pop spectacular that never ran out of breath. It’s easy to forget just how many hits she’s amassed since her 2017 self-titled debut — so many, in fact, that her “Barbie” smash “Dance the Night” was relegated to a 30-second blip during the encore — yet here they were on full parade for nearly two hours, strung together like a greatest hits retrospective without coming across as a grab at, for lack of a better word, nostalgia.
At 30, Lipa is a curious artist, one who clearly attained Main Pop Girl status with “Future Nostalgia” but feels separated from the trappings that come with it. She doesn’t have as rabid a fan base as her peers — her fandom name is “Loves,” in case you were wondering — yet she manages to occupy a space of her own in the competitive world of pop. She’s present in the discourse but doesn’t oversaturate the conversation, giving us glimpses into her glamorous life with regular updates on social media, carefully curating her persona as an alluring yet ultimately unattainable figure.
It’s why her “Radical Optimism” tour felt so immediate. Lipa was fully present and in fuller command, never missing a note or a cue as she played ringleader to a full band and dance crew. If we’re talking about living the life of a showgirl, then Lipa surely lives up to its demands with at least five glittery outfit changes (fur boa and floor-length coat included), lasers galore and vanity mirror light bulbs flashing on the screens behind her. She embraced the “Optimism” aesthetic with the set, designed like a cresting wave to mirror her much-discussed album cover, and punctuated the most explosive moments during songs like “Break My Heart” and “Hallucinate” with jettisons of confetti.
There’s something to be said about how much Lipa has improved as a performer since her early days of gigging across town at the Belasco and Hollywood Palladium. Her dance moves have been memed to death (some called her most viral one the “pencil sharpener”), yet these days, there’s little reason to needle them. She was constantly on the move, flanked by dancers on the lip of the stage for “One Kiss” and strutting down the walkway to the throbbing beat of “Electricity.” The only times she stayed still were to really center the song, standing in a swirling ring of fire on “Love Again” and posing as the nucleus of her band for a spot-on cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.”
And then there’s the voice. One of Lipa’s most significant attributes is the husky tone of her mezzo-soprano, lending a gritty roughness to her songs’ pop polish. Perhaps the most dynamic vocal moment of the entire evening came during “Falling Forever,” when she stood atop the stage and brought out two backup singers mid-song. The music cut out, leaving the three of them to deliver powerful harmonies before the band kicked back in. It was joyous and elevated, the type of sophisticated touch that reinforced that this was more than just your average pop show.
The only time the evening felt like it could have fallen off the rails was during her crowd work. She descended into a barrier between the stage and pit, taking selfies and chatting with clearly starstruck fans who struggled to respond. But she handled it with grace, as she tends to do, running along the lip of the B-stage and slapping hands with audience members as the very hard-working crew members dismantled and assembled new stage setups in real-time.
If “Radical Optimism” felt like a more measured successor to “Future Nostalgia,” as some fans complained, her show at the Forum may be cause for its reconsideration. “Illusion,” “Maria” and “Training Season” felt just as vibrant as “Levitating” and “Physical,” as if she assembled them all on the same sparkly factory line. That’s part of her charm, that no matter how much she tinkers with her formula, she manages to make it all feel specifically her. That she’s able to bring it all to life and tie such a neat bow on it is yet another testament to how singular she remains in the ever-changing pop landscape.
